


drink to me only

by supersonica



Series: kisses are a far better fate than wisdom [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb is a Giggly Drunk, Drinking, February Kiss Prompt, First Kiss, Kissing, Molly is a Sap, Music, Nonbinary Character, Other, The Evening Nip, molly uses he/him, vague allusions to the bardits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 21:38:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17712038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersonica/pseuds/supersonica
Summary: Caleb gave him that soft smile again, and perhaps it was a good thing Molly was now leaning against a piece of furniture. “I don’t think either of us would be much fun to dance with right now, Mister Mollymauk. And besides,” he looked at the minstrels, “I feel like a song, tonight.”





	drink to me only

**Author's Note:**

> one of these days I'll write one of the things I say I'm going to write
> 
> 7\. laughing while kissing

04 (laughing while kissing) 

 

_ Wine is good,  _ Molly decided, waving his hand for a refill.  _ We should celebrate with wine more often. _

Looking at the flushed, smiling wizard on the other side of the bar, Molly amended the thought:

_ Caleb should celebrate more often.   _

They were at the Evening Nip— _ of course they were, where else would they get such good bad wine in Zadash? _ —and as a reward for not completely fucking up their latest mission, the Gentleman had given them more or less free reign of the public supply of alcohol. By now, sometime around midnight, most of the more sober patrons had, quite intelligently, gone back home, and the bar now belonged to the various groups of mercenaries, spies, thieves, and bandits-turned-bards that had decided to exercise their god-given right to drink themselves stupid. 

Molly, personally, had enjoyed quite a reasonable glass of whiskey, all the way from Tal’Dorei, before joining Fjord, Beau and Nott in their quest to defeat the bard-bandits— _ bardits? _ supplied Molly’s brain—in a drinking game. Victorious, obviously, the four of them had claimed their reward of having the bardits pay for cocktails in a wide variety of disturbing, and therefore delightful, colours. 

Molly was fairly sure he’d ordered something called an Iguana Skin— _ whatever that was _ —but if he was being perfectly honest, he’d been a little distracted when it was pushed into his hand because, well.

The wizard.

All the while Molly was ignoring a bardit called Tali, who seemed quite keen on finding out where Molly was staying the night, he was closely following Caleb as he flitted between people on the barroom floor. Something about drinking made hi— _ their  _ wizard must more prone to striking up conversation with anyone he could see, much more willing to stand and listen and nod enthusiastically as some stranger told him about their child’s aptitude for the magical arts. 

And, if the gods were feeling particularly vindictive on Molly’s poor heart, the mood would strike Caleb to beg a song off the musicians to sing along with. Though he categorically refused to show it off while sober Caleb had one of the most beautiful drunk singing voices Molly could ever remember hearing, a smooth, warm tenor than Molly swore he could feel in his own ribs. Molly was never sure if it was the actual tone of Caleb’s voice or the fact that he sounded so relaxed when he sang that made it sound so lovey, but regardless, it was very, very hard not to fall in love with Caleb while he was singing.

Thankfully, they’d not yet reached that point. As Molly stood nursing the wine he’d replaced his Iguana Skin with, he surveyed the rest of the Nein to see what point they  _ were  _ at, and whether it was worth asking the Gentleman to let them sleep on a warm patch of floor, somewhere.

At the table where the Nein were sitting, or, by this point in the evening, where they were keeping their bags, Molly watched as Caleb and Nott counted out every piece of platinum, gold, and silver they’d been given—allegedly seventy platinum, a thousand gold, and sixty-six silver pieces. Personally, Molly had no reason to distrust the Gentleman in this particular regard—after all, he’d never short-changed them before. He didn’t think that Nott or Caleb actually doubted his word either, but they seemed content enough, and, better, not horrifically drunk—or at least, Caleb wasn’t. 

A table away, Fjord and Yasha were being held hostage by another one of the bardits, remanding a rematch for the drinking game they’d just lost. This bardit in particular had a rather large brass pot she seemed to be banging to accentuate her point, and it looked like Fjord at least wasn’t going to go anywhere without imbibing at minimum another ale.

Looking further down the bar Molly could also see Beau and Jester dancing something that he supposed could be called a waltz—in a Xhorhassian brothel, maybe, if everyone were absolutely shitfaced and had only the vaguest idea of what a waltz actually was. At least  _ they  _ looked like they were having fun, though Molly wasn’t sure he could say the same for the patrons who were clutching their stomachs after being blindsided by Beau’s elbows. Jester was more or less sober, having stuck largely to her customary milk, but Beau looked like she may need to be taken out to an alleyway and given a bucket in the next ten minutes or so.

Turning his attention back to Caleb and Nott, Molly walked— _ and did not stumble once, thank you _ —over to their table, throwing himself at the chair closest to where Caleb was counting each individual coin in their loot.

Nott ignored him, as he had expected, given she seemed to have passed out, but Caleb turned his head towards Molly and gave him— _ gifted him with, really _ —a positively radiant smile. The pink flush across his cheeks, clean after an afternoon at the baths, looked even lovelier up close, and in the dim, slightly hazy light of this part of the bar, his blue, blue, blue eyes were absolutely impossible to break away from. 

“ _ Hallo _ , Mollymauk” Caleb said, leaning a little closer, “weren’t you having fun at the bar?”

Molly flapped his hand absently, desperately trying not to look at Caleb’s wine-red lips. “Oh, you know,” he said, “the bardits were there, it was really loud, and I missed you.”

Caleb blinked slowly, and Molly’s heartbeat stuttered for a second as what he just said hit him in the back of the head. 

“What is a bardit?” Caleb asked, instead, his nose and brow scrunching up into expression of concentration as deep as the one he wore while reading an ancient text. It was painfully cute.  

“It’s, um,” Molly said, trying to remember why he’d said that word, “those bandits that are bards now, you know? The bard-bandits?”

Caleb giggled—honest to gods  _ giggled _ —and cupped his face in his palm, elbow resting on the table. “That’s rather good,” he said, ignoring the way Molly’s mouth had fallen ever so slightly open, “I like that.”

“It’s pretty dumb,” Molly replied, a little distracted as he tried to force his brain to memorise the sound of Caleb giggling at one of his comments, drunk though they both may be.

“Still funny,” Caleb argued, laughter fading into a soft, almost sleepy smile. “I know I don’t—I don’t always laugh at your jokes, but. Most of them are actually quite, um. Good.” 

The conversation dropped for a few minutes as Caleb finished counting out the treasure, hand still resting on his palm as he lent slightly towards Molly. Molly knew that, in the small part of his brain that was still logical, it was probably just more comfortable, or maybe Caleb’s body, with its inhibitions lowered, was seeking out warmth. It certainly wasn’t because Caleb, like Molly, was trying to stop himself from throwing an arm around the other man’s waist and kissing the wine from his mouth.

After another five minutes, or possibly an hour, Caleb finally gathered all the coin together and arranged carefully in its trunk. Molly took the opportunity to scoot his chair a little closer on the pretense of seeing inside the box, and caught a whiff of a terribly familiar scent around Caleb’s neck. By the good grace of the Moonweaver, Molly managed to keep himself from burying his nose under Caleb’s jaw to better identify it, but for half a second it was a close thing.

“All there?” he asked, shaking his head slightly to clear his mind and succeeding only in making himself dizzy.

Caleb nodded firmly, tapping the top of the trunk and facing Molly again. “ _ Ja _ , all there. He overpaid us ten silver, though.”

Molly gave him a crooked grin. “Oh, how unfortunate. Should we spend it before the others notice?”

“Mollymauk!” Hi— _ their  _ wizard pretended to open his mouth in shock, but the gleam in Caleb’s wonderful eyes and the way they crinkled at the corners told Molly he was of the same mind. 

“I don’t really feel like much more wine, though,” Caleb added, picking up his cup and peering into its empty depths, “I think I have had quite enough for one night.”

He stared around the room, searching for something else to spend their petty coin on, before smiling as his gaze settled on the other end of the room. Molly followed his eyes past where Beau and Jester had collapsed, somehow, in the same chair, to where a troupe of minstrels were transitioning from a jig to a sea shanty.

“A dance?” Molly asked, feeling his fingers twitch at the idea of holding Caleb that close for three entire—possibly even  _ four _ —minutes.

Caleb stood, suddenly, taking hold of Molly’s wrist and pulling him gently to his feet. They were sharing the same space, now, not quite close enough to feel the heat off each other’s bodies, but certainly close enough for Molly to smell—whatever it was—and have to force his body not to lean forward and mouth at Caleb’s sun-freckled neck. 

There was something about the way Caleb touched him—always, not just tonight, but that fact it remained the same while Caleb was on his way to fully pissed made it feel particularly important—that had Molly’s breath catching in his throat. He never grabbed or tugged or gripped hard, never touched anyone willingly without telegraphing every motion, and though Molly understood this care was likely the result of thorough and continual violence, he could still feel the pull on his heartstrings whenever Caleb’s delicate fingers brushed against his skin.

“Something like that.”

Winding their way through the slowly thinning bar crowd was practically a dance in itself. Half the patrons seemed to be in the process of leaving, and the other half were settling firmly into their cups to ride it out until dawn, so the third of the bar closest to the troupe was filled with people standing and moving and waving their limbs around. 

Though he’d finished his wine a while ago, Molly was nowhere near sober enough to navigate the mess as gracefully as he would’ve liked, so he resorted to simply threading his fingers through Caleb’s and allowing the wizard to guide him towards a two-person table in the corner, close to the harpsichord.

“Aren’t we going to dance, Mister Caleb?” Molly asked, wondering why Caleb wanted him to sit down.

Caleb gave him that soft smile again, and perhaps it was a good thing Molly was now leaning against a piece of furniture. “I don’t think either of us would be much fun to dance with right now, Mister Mollymauk. And besides,” he looked at the minstrels, “I feel like a song, tonight.”

He left Molly to slither down onto a seat and had a few words with the drow on the side who looked to be in charge of the group, handing them what looked like slightly more than the ten silver they’d been overpaid. Walking back to where Molly sat, staring at the ceiling and wondering which god he had offended this time, Caleb pulled the other stool around the table so they could both face the musicians.

Before he sat, he reach over and grabbed a cup of wine off a passing server, handing it to Molly with a, “We can share.”

“What did you ask for?” Molly said, letting his tail flick behind both of their backs as he took a sip.

Caleb shrugged, still smiling contentedly— _ gods, he never looks this peaceful _ —and replied, “Oh, nothing in particular, just something we can sing to.”

Molly coughed. “ _ We _ ?”

Turning his face to Molly’s, Caleb raised an eyebrow. “You have a lovely singing voice, Molly. When you’re not screaming drinking songs in public, anyway.”

Molly accidentally slapped himself on the ankle with his own tail, it had whipped that fast.

“Don’t be rude, Caleb,” he said, hoping to coax another laugh out of his friend, “I do my best work while screaming in public.”

Caleb rolled his eyes and snorted, but the small grin never left his face. “I’ll be sure to tell that to the crownsguard next time you get arrested as a public nuisance.”

“Hey—”

He was cut off by the music as the halfling on harpsichord started a slow, flowing melody. It wasn’t yet loud enough to be heard over the talking of the bar, calmer though the patrons were, now, but this close, it drew Molly’s attention completely. 

After a few seconds, the string bass player joined, and then the viol, and the lute, and the mandolin. It wasn’t anything driving, or theatrical, or even, in the beginning, particularly stirring, but—and perhaps this was the wine, but still—Molly felt his heartbeat begin to line up with the movement of the song. He saw the drow Caleb had been talking to rise to their feet and move to the front of the troupe, opening their mouth to begin, but instead of the singer, Molly heard—  

“ _ Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine, _ ” he sang.

Every other sound in the room—the drow, whose voice Molly never even heard, the musicians, the chattering patrons and the noise of glasses clinking and people moving—disappeared, as Molly’s entire field of concentration narrowed down to the slightly off-key, murmuring voice next to him. 

“ _ Or leave a kiss within the cup, and I’ll not ask for wine, _ ” he sang.

Caleb was swaying a little, his shoulders brushing against Molly’s on every other beat and his face absolutely relaxed as he sang to the slow beat of the song, and Molly completely gave up trying to look anywhere else but at his gently moving lips.

“ _ The thirst that from the soul does rise, does ask a drink divine, _ ” he sang.

Molly took a gulp from their shared cup, willing his hands not to shake as he heard the rasp of Caleb’s drunk voice close to his ears. He wasn’t singing particularly loudly—this was  _ Caleb _ , he never asked for attention, never went out of his way to perform unless he was trying to hide something. This wasn’t like when Molly and Jester sang to annoy the guards, or when Fjord tried teaching everyone a sea shanty to break up the constant renditions of Ninety-Nine Bottles. 

The closest thing Molly could think of to the way he felt listening to Caleb sing—sing so that only  _ he  _ could hear—was Gustav or Ornna murmuring a lullaby in those first few months after he’d crawled from the earth. It had been something only for him to hear, something that was only supposed to be important to them.

“ _ But might I of love's nectar sup, I would not change for thine, _ ” he sang.

The song kept going, but apparently Caleb didn’t know or didn’t remember the words past the opening verse. He rested folded his hands in his lap and and continued swaying, a little drunkenly, knocking against Molly’s shoulders with a determined twist to his mouth until Molly sighed and swayed with him.

They sat like that for the remainder of the song, sharing their wine as the music, never quite loud enough to catch the absolute attention of the rest of the bar, grew and swelled and faded. Not that Molly was paying a great deal of attention—his world had narrowed and shrunk, becoming warm and hazy and soft. The warmth of the wine in a cup, the warmth of Caleb’s body, pressed against him from shoulder to knee, and his fingers where they grazed Molly’s. The warmth of his mellow voice, mumbling along to words he didn’t really know as Molly hummed. 

Though he managed to keep his face schooled into something appropriate for a friend leaning on his companion while both of them were more than a little tipsy, there was nothing Molly could do to control his tail. It swished behind him all the while Caleb was singing, and later, to avoid smacking Caleb in the back of the leg he wrapped it around his own leg, though it itched to grab Caleb’s waist and pull him in for—no. Molly contented himself, instead, with leaning his head against Caleb’s shoulder and accepting a clumsy pat to the side of his face.

The ever-present smoke in the bar seemed a little lighter this far from the main crowd, still giving the air a tangible weight, but not enough for Molly to feel like he was underwater. A fire on the wall opposite them cast a soft golden glow over their part of the room, making everything seem a little dream-like, a little vague. Molly was deliberately avoiding looking at Caleb, knowing from a year, now, of heartrending experience how lovely firelight looked reflected in his blue, crystalline eyes, bringing out the gold in his red hair and dancing off the freckles on his skin. 

Turning him head to rest in the crook of Caleb’s neck as he’d been wanting to all evening, too relaxed to remember why he hadn’t wanted to. The mysterious scent Caleb had been wearing all evening was stronger here, and Molly swore it was something different from the usual musk of ink and dirt and ozone that hung around the wizard. Not caring particularly how this must’ve looked to the other patrons, Molly nuzzled a little closer, feeling—or perhaps, hoping he was feeling—the drumbeat of Caleb’s heart speed up a little.

It was so, so familiar, and Molly knew that if he hadn’t been drunk he would’ve identified it in an instant, but as he was it took a few seconds of leaning on Caleb’s chest and breathing in his skin before it struck him.

“Is that—lavender?” he asked, pulling his head away to look at Caleb’s face, frowning.

Caleb blushed, and if Molly had thought his pink wine flush was pretty, the scarlet that appeared high on his cheekbones was absolutely gorgeous. 

“Um,” he said, blinking slowly, “....yes.”

Neither of them said anything for a long moment, and Molly realised, far, far too late, that Caleb’s wiry hand had come to rest on his waist, keeping Molly pressed to his side. Molly moved his left arm out from where it was caught between their bodies, throwing it around Caleb’s shoulders to keep himself from falling directly into Caleb’s lap.

“Why are you wearing lavender?” Molly whispered, much too close to Caleb’s wine-stained lips.

“It, um,” Caleb breathed, “at the baths, I—there was a bottle, and it—I like it. It’s calming. Recently I—I’ve found it to be quite… calming.”    

Molly couldn’t have wiped the delighted smile of his face for all the gold in the Gentleman’s vault. “Yes, I quite like it too. I like it so much, actually,” he couldn’t contain a tiny laugh, “that I wear it every day, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed.”

Caleb—beautiful, tipsy, smiling Caleb—giggled, just a little. “I have, actually,” he said, smiling, leaning his forehead against Molly’s.

Molly hummed, bringing his right hand up to run his fingers over Caleb’s newly-shaven jaw.  _ This is a bad idea _ , he thought,  _ you’re both drunk, this is going to end badly and he will leave you and you’ll break your own stupid heart _ .

He looked back into Caleb’s flushed face, his shoulders still shaking from laughter beneath Molly’s arm, and saw the pure feeling there, made open and honest by the combination of wine and good music and—Molly hoped—something that would one day grow into love.

_ Oh well, then.  _

Still giggling, and still unable to break Caleb’s magnetising eye contact, Molly moved closer until he and Caleb were nose-to-nose. They sat like that, holding their breath for an eternal half second before, without closing his eyes, Caleb tilted his head and—so gentle Molly would have sobbed if he weren’t laughing—pressed his lips against Molly’s.

It was alcohol-dry, a little awkwardly positioned, burning warm from the heart of the fire and their bodies, and the literal spark Molly felt when their lips met was more akin to arcane electricity than any romantic metaphor, but it was better than anything Molly could ever have dreamed. 

_ Who gives a shit if it’s a bad idea, this is  _ everything _.  _

It was also quite difficult to keep kissing someone—even the man Molly was starting to realise he was probably quite deep in love with—while laughing, and so after a few seconds they had to break away, still grinning like absolute loons, still holding on to each other tight as possible. 

“That was,” Caleb began.

“Yes.” Molly finished, sliding fully onto Caleb’s lap and running the pads of his fingers over the edges of Caleb’s cheekbones. “We should, um, sometime,” he added.

“Again,  _ ja _ ,” Caleb said, winding his own arms around Molly so he was holding him fully, his long fingers spanning the back of Molly’s waist in a way that made him feel slightly light-headed. 

Molly thought, objectively speaking, he probably could have died happy right in this moment.

Behind them, the musicians started playing something Molly vaguely recognised, but he didn’t feel it was really fair for anyone to expect him to pay attention at the moment, comfortably tipsy and being held by a warm wizard as he was. 

After all, he might not have this forever. He might not even have it tomorrow—Caleb might decide once he was more sober that he never wanted anything to do with Molly ever again. Either or both of them might be killed on an adventure. Lightning might strike Molly dead as soon as he left the Evening Nip that night.

So rather than focus on the music, or the wine still in their cup, or the chattering and screaming of everyone else in the bar, Molly leaned in again to the wizard who was, for the moment,  _ his _ —not the Nein’s, not the Empire’s,  _ his _ —and kissed him again.  

And again.

And many more times that night, until their jaws hurt from smiling.

 

**Author's Note:**

> song used is a version of "Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes", lyrics from a poem by Ben Johnson called "Song. To Cecilia."
> 
> also thanks to the geniuses on the wm discord for shouting at me to write more, you're all wonderful


End file.
